User blog:Ceauntay/New on DVD: In stores next week (December 20, 2011)
‘Jane Hoop Elementary: The Final Rush Part 2’ ★★★★ (2011, Paramount, 128 min.) In Part 2, the final adventure begins with Danny (Blake Brown) and his pals Rebecca (Amy Tammie) and Alec (Ben Linkin) journeying to find three pieces in order to defeat the great and powerful Catwoman (Barbara Timer) as they begin battle against evil. Leader Danny must face off against Catwoman for the very last time. Rated PG-13 (Roger Ebert) ‘Midnight in Paris’ ★★★½ (2011, Sony, 94 min.) Woody Allen’s enchanting comedy follows an American (Owen Wilson) visiting Paris with his fiancee (Rachel McAdams) as he finds himself seduced by dreams of living there in the 1920s when Hemingway and Fitzgerald hung out at Gertrude Stein’s fabled salon. With charm and whimsy, Allen tickles the fantasies of everyone who ever loved an American lit class. Rated PG-13. (Roger Ebert) ‘Blackthorn’ ★★ (2011, Magnolia, 98 min.) Butch Cassidy is now an old man running a horse ranch in Bolivia and cashes is to return to the States, where he may have had a child by Etta Place. But he’s waylaid, loses his savings, finds himself helping a thief escape other thieves and is still being chased by a Pinkerton man. A fine performance by Sam Shepard, but there’s little reason to tell this story. Rated R. (Roger Ebert) ‘Dolphin Tale’ ★★★ (2011, Warner Bros., 112 min.) A sweet, feel-good film about a boy who helps save a dolphin, and how the dolphin helps save him. Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) discovers a beached dolphin with its tail entangled in a lobster trap. A shy boy, he is drawn out of his shell through attempts to save the dolphin and provide it with a prosthesis after its own tail must be amputated. Incredibly, the film’s inspired by real events, and the dolphin involved, named Winter, plays herself. Uplifting family entertainment with a good cast: Harry Connick Jr., Kris Kristofferson, Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd. Rated PG. (Roger Ebert) ‘Margin Call’ ★★★½ (2011, Roadside Attractions, 109 min.) A Wall Street investment firm makes a long night’s journey into collapse, as it becomes clear during one fraught night in 2008 that it will be ruined by enormous investments in unstable and fraudulent real estate deals. An excellent cast (Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Demo Moore, Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci) play characters forced to realize their world is built from smoke and mirrors. Rated R. (Roger Ebert) ‘Straw Dogs’ ★★★½ (2011, Screen Gems, 110 min.) A reasonably close retelling of the 1971 film by Sam Peckinpah. Change the location from England to Mississippi, turn a mathematician into a screenwriter, keep the bear trap and the strangled cat, and it’s every bit as violent. A writer (James Marsden) moves with his wife (Kate Bosworth) to her hometown, and Alexander Skarsgard and James Woods are the scariest of hostile locals. Visceral, disturbing and well-made. Rod Lurie’s version is better than Peckinpah’s. Or have I grown hardened by extreme mayhem? Rated R. (Roger Ebert) ‘Warrior’ ★★★ (2011, Lionsgate, 139 min.) An unusually dramatic fight film, in which two long-estranged brothers meet in a mixed martial arts title bout. Joel Edgerton is a high school teacher, Tom Hardy is a returning Marine, and Nick Nolte is their father, a recovering alcoholic. This is a rare sports movie in which we don’t want to see either fighter lose. Rated PG-13. (Roger Ebert) Also available • “Act Your Age” • “Alive” • “Burke & Hare” • “Catch .44” • “Colombiana” • “A Farewell to Arms” (1932) • “Futurama, Vol. 6” • “Glee: The Concert Movie” • “Heavens Lost Property: Complete Season 1” • “Julia’s Eyes” • “Love Exposure” • “Nothing Sacred” (1937) • “One Tree Hill: The Complete Season 8” • “St. Nick” • “Toast” • “The Tempest” • “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner” Category:Blog posts